


Burning

by betweenfactandbreakfast



Series: Stranger than Earth [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst and Femslash thats what its all about, Colonist/Sole Survivor Shepard, Dark, F/F, Post-Game(s), Renegade Shepard - Freeform, rough-ish sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenfactandbreakfast/pseuds/betweenfactandbreakfast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, a hopelessly lost Nina Shepard finds what she's looking for in an unlikely place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning

**Author's Note:**

> There is a severe lack of Aria/Fshep on here I'm so disappointed tbh? I'm considering doing a multichapter thing about Nina/Aria let me know if that's something you'd be interested in reading!
> 
> also, reading [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3261353) piece about nina and garrus might be helpful but isnt necessary

She doesn’t know when it had started, only that it had, only that she feels it in the very depths of herself and can’t _stop_ feeling it.

She thinks maybe after the battle for Omega, after the unexpected kiss that had set her aflame like nothing had for years, maybe that was when it had started. At the time, she hadn’t- couldn’t- think much about it. She was fighting a war, and if there was one thing Nina believed in it was in single-minded, absolute focus on the mission. She could run her fingers over the chessboard in her cabin, thinking but never over-thinking. There was a war to be won. There was a mission.

Aria T’loak could wait.

After the war, though, things are different.

“Your eye.” Says the asari curtly, by way of greeting, as Nina steps off the shuttle onto Omega’s private dock.

“Yeah,” Nina replies, touching her fingers gingerly to the eyepatch she now wears. “You’ve heard the story. Shrapnel from the explosion on the citadel.”

Aria frowns, reaches slender violet fingers to trace the scar that runs vertical from the bottom of the patch. It makes Nina shiver, it makes her skin run hot and cold all at the same time.

“Why’d you come here, Shepard?” Says Aria.

Nina catches her hand before she can lower it, meets the asari’s stormy gaze.

Aria lets out a soft, incredulous sigh, the tiniest laugh of disbelief. “Commander Shepard, hero of the Reaper War. And still she lowers herself to my filthy station.”

“I do what I have to.”

“I know. It’s why you’re so very… compelling.” Aria smirks. “I’ve always thought we were two of a kind, you and I. And you know that’s high praise coming from me.”

She tugs her arm free of Nina’s grasp. “You know where I live, Shepard.” She says, a hungry glimmer in her eye. It was the same glimmer she’d gotten every time she’d talked about reclaiming Omega. Like she burnt for it, like the anger she felt inside was more intense than any other possible emotion.

Nina knew the feeling.

* * *

 

Without her N7 armour or Alliance uniform, Nina almost feels weightless. She won’t be recognised, not here, not under the pulsing lights and black beats of Afterlife. She can make her way to Aria’s booth easily.

The Batarian bodyguard gives her a cursory look, then a nod. He must be very professional- the few Batarians left in the galaxy tend on the most part to spit in her direction and curse her name.  She remembers the first Batarian she ever saw, roaring orders in a horrible, unfamiliar tongue, pulling a screaming woman by the hair, a gun pressed to her bloody scalp. She wonders if his friends, family, loved ones were killed by the Alpha Relay Incident.

“Shepard.” Aria says. She’s exactly as Nina remembers from her time going after the Collectors- lounging, one leg crossed over the other in imperious apathy. “No attempts on your life, I trust? If you want, I can assign one of my boys to look after you.” She gestures at the seat on the couch next to her. It is all so familiar, like nothing has changed.

But it has, hasn’t it? Nina is missing an eye, the war is over, and inside she is hollow. Empty. Waiting.

She sits, regardless.

“Out.” Aria snaps at her lackeys, and they obey without question, closing the doors behind them. Nina imagines that there’s even less questions these days than there once was. The death of Oleg Petrovsky is legend even in Council space. It sends an unmistakeable message: the price you pay if you fuck with Aria.

“Shepard,” Aria says again, pressing a button on the console nearby to lock the doors. “I’ll be blunt, because I owe you much. You’ve earned my respect in more ways than one. Few people ever… rise so high in my esteem. But you should know I prefer to keep my entanglements…. impersonal. To do otherwise is bad for business.”

“Wow.” Nina says, sitting back. “That _was_ blunt.”

“I do not mince words.”

“Yeah. Christ.”

Aria stands up, turns so that she can see her empire, the lights and dancers and the deep, deep shadows.

Nina closes her eyes. Her whole life, she’s had no memories untinged by pain. Nothing to hold onto that hasn’t twisted a bloody path through her life.

“Impersonal is good.” She says.

Aria doesn’t turn, doesn’t speak, but Nina can see a smile tug at the corners of her lips. Her face is cut into crystalline fragments by the strobelight.

Nina stands up, goes to her, slides a hand down the exposed skin of Aria’s waist to her hips. The asari lets out a long breath, leaning backwards into her.

Then she twists, turns them so that Nina’s back is to the window, and kisses her roughly, gripping the sides of her face.

She tastes like power, like control, the sort that Nina has sought her whole life. Who knew she’d find it here, in the dark, with the Pirate Queen of Omega.

There’s no sound, only the dull thumping of the bass from the club. Aria backs her towards the couch, but forces her up against the window, pinning her arms against the glass. Nina turns her head so she can see the writhing masses of people below.

“Don’t worry,” Aria says. “It’s tinted. This is yours and mine alone.”

“Good.” Nina replies.

Aria unbuttons Nina’s shirt carefully, uncharacteristically enough. Nina would have expected her to rip it open. She unhooks Nina’s bra, letting it slip down her arms onto her lap.

“And you?” Nina asks, biting her lip.

Aria shrugs, removing her coat and unfastening that black quasi-armour she always wore. If it weren’t for an impregnable biotic barrier, she would have been shredded by bullets long ago. It falls away, and then Aria T’loak is bare before her, beautiful and terrible and burning.

She kisses Nina again- angrily, but Nina expected no less. Her mouth leaves a hot trail down her jaw and neck, cutting a path between her breasts to her stomach. Nina lets her head roll back, a silent gasp on her lips, hooking a leg over Aria’s bare shoulder. Aria grips her thigh hard enough to bruise, slips her other hand forward under Nina's skirt, fingers seeking, searching.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Nina moans under her breath as Aria’s fingers explore her, sending little shocks radiating from her core

 _I needed this, I needed this._ The thought resounds in her mind, the universe at last granting her absolution for everything, everything, absolutely everything, for Batarian slavers and Thresher Maws and Reapers.

She runs fingers along the crest of Aria’s head as she dips to kiss a trail up Nina’s inner thigh, deeper and deeper, slower and slower, until Nina feels like she might die from the _burn_ of wanting it. It’s the sublime pause between lining up your shot and the pull of the trigger, it’s everything. She feels unbridled, she feels savage. She feels free.


End file.
